The Impeachment of Abraham Lincoln (69 page)

“You don’t believe I could simply be curious to see whether I am right?”

“Miss Canner, from all that I have heard of you, I have no doubt that you are highly curious, and also that you are usually right. But, no. In this particular case, I do not believe that would be enough to bring you to this office.” Steel slipped into his voice, reminding Abigail that she might be clever but he was cleverer—and President besides. “Now, answer my question, please.”

“Sir, I ask three things. First, that my sister be protected. Second, that the murderer of Rebecca Deveaux be punished. Third, that no one with any official standing ever again refer to Rebecca as a prostitute. I understand entirely why you could not allow the police inquiries to continue, but I do not believe that it is necessary, in order to keep your secrets, to drag her name through the mud. And, besides, sir. If matters have gone as you expected them on Capitol Hill, I do not believe anyone imagines any longer that Mr. Stanton is with the Radicals.”

“No.” Another wink. “Still, they might imagine that he has simply had a change of heart. My hand in this thing must remain invisible.” He stood. The meeting was over. “As to your requests, Miss Canner. Without in any way confirming any of your suppositions, I can assure you that, according to my most recent information, your sister is perfectly safe. And I believe there are those who will take my advice about how we might, in future, refer to the unfortunate Miss Deveaux. But as to punishing her killer, there we run into a small difficulty.”

“Because you are going to make a deal!”

“No, Miss Canner. Because we do not know who killed her.” He was escorting her to the door. “We don’t have the list of conspirators, Miss Canner. We have no idea where it is.” He paused, measuring her. “You’ve heard about poor Baker, I suppose? They tell me he has the catarrh. The doctors say they have not seen a case so serious in years. He is stronger, but he may not survive. A couple of days ago I had word that he had told Stanton he was close to finding the list of conspirators. A mighty peculiar coincidence.”

Noah Brooks showed her out.

I

ON WEDNESDAY, ABIGAIL
was back in her seat.

Jonathan was delighted, if also worried; Kate Sprague was concerned; so concerned, in fact, that, shortly after her father gaveled the session to order and announced that the Managers would now present closing argument, Kate leaned toward Abigail and asked in a murmur whether there was any truth to the story that she had been seen at the White House yesterday.

“I cannot say,” Abigail whispered back, “whether there is truth to the story that I was seen, as I do not know whether the witness was there.” A smile of inspiration. “And if I was seen there, I should expect your witness to bear a better witness than words.”

The blue eyes widened. Kate was stumped, Abigail knew at once; and knew, also, that she must return grace for grace, and never hint that she had won the round.

“I was there,” Abigail said. “Briefly.”

“To see Mr. Lincoln?”

“I had business in the Mansion.”

“Was this related to your decision not to attend the Cookes’ dinner with me on Monday evening?” When Abigail did not answer, Kate tried another tack. “Did you know that Miss Margaret Felix has left the city? I gather that she and Mr. Hilliman had a disagreement of some sort. Another woman perhaps.” Still Abigail did not rise to the bait. Kate sat back. “In any event, Miss Felix has returned to Philadelphia, and her
cousin Mr. Bannerman has gone off to upstate New York. A fascinating coincidence, don’t you think?”

But Abigail was watching the scene below. She had not planned to attend today’s session, and was not entirely sure what had drawn her, except that she was unable to stay away, drawn to the Hill the way we are drawn to objects of exquisite beauty, and moments of horrific disaster. So many tiny twists and turns, seemingly unimportant, had brought her to this moment.

She realized that Benjamin Butler was speaking, that he had been on his feet for some while, as she sat brooding, Kate uneasy beside her.

Butler was discussing Lincoln’s supposed jokes about the Congress: “Counsel for respondent contends that the President can never be held answerable for what comes out of his mouth, no matter how outrageous. They point to his freedom of speech. By doing so, they concede the words themselves, and thereby strengthen our case. Read the speeches. There they stand in history as monuments to Mr. Lincoln’s disgraceful conduct. The defense insists that the President is free to say what he will. I should like them to address just how far a public official may go in threatening and embarrassing the other branches of the government before the only power that can, will step in and correct the wrong. I submit that we have reached that point, unless we are to say, with the Bard, that judgment has fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.”

Soon after, he sat. Bingham had summarized the evidence on Counts One and Two, Butler on Counts Three and Four. It was left to Thaddeus Stevens, the mightiest orator in the House of Representatives, to complete the argument. By now he could barely stand; everyone understood that the presentation he was about to make would likely be the final feat of an illustrious life. He had already picked out the plot where he wished to be laid to rest, insisting on one of the few cemeteries in Pennsylvania that permitted black and white to be buried side by side.

But the voice was as powerful as ever. Stevens had a simple argument. Lincoln was a tyrant, no more and no less. Say what you want about this count or that, but the words of the impeachment resolution were but faint reflections of the reality that the nation lived, in effect, under military government, answerable to the will of one man only. Even the laws were constitutional only if the President said they were.

“You will remember, of course, that Abraham Lincoln has twice taken the oath of office as President of the United States. This means
that he has twice promised to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. Now imagine the scene that counsel for respondent would have us accept, that Mr. Lincoln, having been sworn on the Holy Evangels to obey the Constitution, and being about to depart, turns to the person administering the oath and says, ‘Wait. I have a further oath. I do solemnly swear that I will not allow certain statutes, even if passed by Congress over the presidential veto, to be executed. I will prevent their execution by virtue of my own constitutional power.’ ”

Stevens’s eyes smoldered as they passed over the ranked Senators. “How shocked this Congress would have been,” he said. “How shocked the thirty millions or more who live in this country would have been. Surely the United States would not have permitted the man’s inauguration as President. And yet that is the man Mr. Lincoln has become, by both his words and his conduct of the office.”

At that point, Stevens fell to coughing. He begged the Court’s indulgence, and explained that he could no longer stand. By unanimous consent, he was permitted to continue his remarks while sitting. Soon even that was impossible. His voice had grown too weak. He could not continue. As Thaddeus Stevens handed to Benjamin Butler the last pages of the final speech of his career, the ladies of Washington dabbed their eyes. Abigail dabbed hers. She greatly admired the little man, even though they had never met.

Kate sat stoically, watching her father, who was showing signs of restlessness, perhaps because he was no longer the focus of the proceeding.

“I should like to conclude,” said Butler, still reading for Stevens, “with a memorable and powerful quotation from an American political figure whom even counsel for the respondent, I suspect, will revere. We have heard a great deal these last few days on the necessity or prudence or even the inevitability of the breaking of the laws of the land in order to accomplish a great task. In response to which, let me read the following:

Butler looked around the room. “Those mighty words were spoken on January 27, 1838, in an address to the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois.” The whispers in the audience and on the floor were quite loud now. “Their message of absolute reverence for the laws of the nation, their dismissal of all explanation or excuse, is one that we here today must take to heart. And the speaker on that occasion,” Butler continued, inexorably, “was Abraham Lincoln.”

He sat. The Managers had completed their case.

In the ensuing silence, Chase declared the court of impeachment adjourned for the day. Trial would resume tomorrow at noon, he said, with closing arguments offered by counsel for the respondent.

Abigail found herself wreathed in gloom once more. The cause was lost, but that was not, perhaps, the reason for her mourning. Her genuine sadness was for what she herself had lost, and what she would now be required to do. Listening to Mr. Lincoln’s bold words, quoted by Thaddeus Stevens and read aloud by Benjamin Butler, Abigail had realized that she knew now the key to the cipher; and she knew, without so much as looking at the text, exactly what the message was.

II

Jonathan Hilliman returned to the office to put the folders and exhibits away. He summoned Plum, who was sitting on his hands downstairs, to come help. Dennard had insisted that everyone take the night off, and the lawyers had gone straight home from the trial to change for the evening’s receptions. Jonathan, much against his better judgment, had accepted a dinner invitation from Jay Cooke, of the great banking
family, who was in town, most likely to see Salmon Chase, whom he was backing for President. What Cooke wanted, Jonathan could not imagine: even if the great banker, too, wanted to argue about the tariff or hard money, there was nothing whatever at this point that Jonathan could do about it. There were no deals left to be made, least of all with Lincoln. Senator Fessenden had told the group last night that although the embarrassment the Managers had suffered over Stanton had played well in the newspapers, it had at best swung two or three votes back into the undecided column. Not a single Senator had switched to Lincoln’s side. Worse, Senator Sprague—Kate’s husband—who had been counted on as a likely vote for acquittal, might be swaying toward conviction. His father-in-law’s position as both presiding officer and likely candidate next year had been thought to make it unlikely that Sprague would dare vote against Lincoln, lest he appear entirely calculating and cynical; but his business interests also demanded a high tariff, and by now the entire capital suspected that Lincoln had made a secret deal to lower it. There were even whispers that an anti-Lincoln vote or two, under the influence of the bankers, had made closet commitments to switch on the final tally. True, the rumor had almost certainly come from Wade’s supporters, but in politics all rumors tend to be believed as long as they are harmful to the other side.

And so, after Jonathan shut up the last of the exhibits in the cabinets and allowed Plum to depart, he let his gaze linger with real sadness on the long, drafty room he would soon be leaving for good. He was thinking of Meg. He supposed that he would write to her, and she would write back, and they would patch things up, and marry as planned in October, and he would join New England society, just as his family wanted. He did not know yet how he would wiggle free of Belmont’s effort to take over Hilliman & Sons, but he would do it; he would liberate the family company, and rebuild the family fortune, and never again, for any reason, have the slightest involvement in politics.

And the only other thing he needed was—

“Woolgathering?”

Abigail.

III

“I was not woolgathering,” he said, hiding his delight. “I was trying to be sure that I had completed all my tasks before going to dinner.”

Abigail shut the door behind her. “Dinner,” she repeated, as if she had discovered a new vice. “I see.”

“I am dining with the Jay Cookes.”

“Very impressive. At what time?”

“Eight.” He glanced at the grandfather clock. “It is half past six. I must be going, or I shall be late.” An expression crinkled her face, an emotion Jonathan was afraid to identify. An instant later it was gone. His next words were blurted, unthinking; and it was some while before he could explain the impulse, even to himself. “I am not escorting Miss Felix. She has left the city and returned to Philadelphia.”